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If the contest between the two contenders to succeed Nick Clegg as leader of the Liberal Democrats seemed particularly grim, it’s probably because most of the ‘big beasts’ lost their constituencies in last May’s wipeout.

Vincent Cable, former business secretary; Danny Alexander, the former chief secretary to the treasury; Simon Hughes, a former civil liberties minister and former deputy party leader — all lost their constituencies in an election that saw the LibDem caucus shrink from 56 to just eight.

So there’s not an incredible groundswell of excitement for Tim Farron, who was announced today as the party’s new leader — The Telegraph ran a comprehensive profile today in anticipation of Farron’s widely expected victory.

In a nutshell, Farron is the most openly pious major party leader in recent memory — somewhat unique in a country where Alistair Campbell, a media adviser to former prime minister Tony Blair (himself something of a believer) once famously said, ‘We don’t do God.’ Farron’s Christianity has made him somewhat hesitant on LGBT rights, including on the landmark 2013 vote to enact marriage equality, and he’s somewhat anti-abortion as well.

Otherwise, Farron ran as a candidate far closer to Labour than to the Conservative Party, and it seems clear that Farron wants to pull the Liberal Democrats back to their comfort zone of the 1990s and mid-2000s as a leftist alternative to the Tories.

Since 2005, he’s represented the Westmorland and Lonsdale constituency in Cumbia, England’s northwestern corner. Though he narrowly won the party presidency in 2011, Farron has no ministerial experience and he has a history of bucking the party’s leadership — most notably opposing Clegg’s now-notorious turn on student fees. The December 2010 vote split the party — 28 MPs supported the measure, which tripled tuition fees. Clegg’s decision maintained the unity of the Tory-LibDem coalition, but it disillusioned many of the party’s supporters. Clegg had campaigned vigorously in 2010 on the promise that he would oppose fee hikes, and the issue is widely cited as a primary cause for the LibDem wipeout in the 2015 election.

Farron’s opponent, Norman Lamb, was viewed as the more moderate candidate with close ties to Clegg. Twelve years older than Farron, Lamb has been an MP from Norfolk since 2001, and he served as minister of state for care and support from 2012 to 2015. Though Clegg never formally endorsed him, Lamb won the support of two additional former leaders — Menzies Campbell and Paddy Ashdown.

If history serves as any guide, Farron’s task will largely be a thankless one that leaves him, at best, in a rebuilding role. At worst, he may be destined to become the party’s analogue to William Hague or the Michael Foot.

After the Labour Party’s defeat in the 1979 election, it took 18 years and three leaders before the party returned to power.

When the Conservatives, likewise, suffered a cataclysmic defeat in the 1997 election, it spent 13 years in the wilderness, shuffling through three leaders before it eventually landed on David Cameron.

Four candidates are currently vying for the Labour Party leadership — voting will be open to party members between August 14 and September 10, with the leader to be announced at a September 12 conference.

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Throughout the night, Suffragio will be live-blogging the results of the United Kingdom’s general election to elect all 650 members of the House of Commons.

BBC Exit Poll10:23 pm GMT, 5:23 pm ET

It hardly seems correct, but BBC’s exit polls have the Conservatives just short of a majority, winning nine additional seats from the current House of Commons. It’s a fabulous drop for Labour, a great night for the Scottish nationalists and a horrific bloodbath for the Liberal Democrats. Nonetheless, if the numbers are correct, it will put the Tories in pole position to form the next government. Ironically, though the Lib Dems are forecast, in this poll, to lose 46 of their 56 seats, they would, together with the Tories, be able to cobble a majority. This assumes that Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democratic leader and deputy prime minister, holds onto his seat in Sheffield Hallam, and will enter into a fresh coalition with the Conservatives.

Note that the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which currently holds eight seats, could give a new Tory/Lib Dem coalition an extra margin of comfort. Note that if Sinn Féin wins five seats (as in 2010), the Tories need only a 323-seat majority, not 326, because those MPs refuse to sit in Westminster.

Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor who attacked the Tories relentlessly over austerity, has lost his election. A longtime aide to former prime minister Gordon Brown from 1990 until his election to parliament in 2005, Balls finished third in the 2010 Labour leadership election behind the two Miliband brothers. That he’s lost his Leeds constituency is Labour’s chief ‘Portillo moment’ — the defenestration of one of the party’s potential new leaders. Notwithstanding Balls’s defeat, his wife, shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper, remains a top contender to succeed Ed Miliband.

Caroline Lucas easily wins reelection, giving the Greens an important victory. The Green Party is now winning 3.7% of the vote nationally, but it will hold just this seat — Natalie Bennett, the party’s leader, who struggled at times during the campaign, finished third in the Holborn and St Pancras constituency. Nevertheless, it represents a huge leap forward for the Greens — a rise from the 0.9% it won in 2010.

I’m ending the live blog now. All three major party leaders are expected to address the public widely tomorrow, and there are still plenty of outstanding seats.

We’re still waiting for final results in Rochester & Strood, where UKIP MP Mark Reckless, a Tory convert, was expected to lose.

We’re also still waiting for South Thanet’s results, where Nigel Farage, the UKIP leader, has said he’ll resign as UKIP leader if he loses the constituency.

In Leeds, we’re still waiting for results from the Morley and Outwood constituency, where Labour’s shadow chancellor Ed Balls is in a tough fight — if he loses, Labour will lose a potential leadership candidate.

Though he may well survive his party’s horrendous defeat in Sunday’s European elections, Nick Clegg’s decision to cling to the leadership of the Liberal Democrat will almost certainly doom it to equally damaging losses in the May 2015 British general election.

Appearing weary in a television interview after his party lost 10 of its previous 11 seats in the European Parliament, Clegg (pictured above) defied calls yesterday from both inside and outside his party to step down as leader.

It’s axiomatic that junior coalition partners tend to suffer in elections. The Freie Demokratische Partei (FDP, Free Democratic Party), which joined German chancellor Angela Merkel in government between 2009 and 2013, lost all of its seats in the Bundestag, the lower house of the German parliament, for the first time since World War II in last September’s federal elections. It, too, suffered on Sunday, losing all but three of its previous 12 MEPs in Sunday’s election as well.

In Ireland, the center-left Labour Party, the junior partner in a government led by center-right Fine Gael, lost all three of its MEPs and won just 5.3% of the vote. Its seven-year leader, Eamon Gilmore, who has served as Ireland’s Tánaiste, its deputy prime minister, and foreign affairs minister, since 2011, resigned on Monday, taking responsibility for Labour’s horrendous showing.

Gilmore’s example makes Clegg’s position even more awkward.

Paddy Ashdown, a member of the House of Lords, and the party’s leader between 1988 and 1999, defended Clegg, as did former leader Sir Menzies Campbell. But private polls, leaked to the press, show that Clegg’s Liberal Democrats are headed for an equally jarring defeat in 12 months, and that Clegg himself could even lose his seat.

Clegg is widely viewed as having lost a series of debates with the leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party, Nigel Farage, who led UKIP to a stunning victory on Sunday, winning 27.5% of the vote and 24 seats in the European Parliament:

Farage credited his victory, in part, to the debates with Clegg, though he crowed on Monday that Clegg’s position as leader is untenable, and that he would be ‘surprised’ if Clegg leads the LibDems into the next election.

To Clegg’s credit, neither Conservative prime minister David Cameron nor Labour leader Ed Miliband were willing to debate Farage by strongly defending European integration and the continued British role in the European Union. Former Labour prime minister Tony Blair noted Clegg’s integrity yesterday for doing so, while accurately highlighting the more fundamental problem for the LibDems heading into election season:

Blair praised the way in which Nick Clegg had shown leadership in confronting the anti-EU mood in the country. “To be fair to Nick Clegg – I don’t want to damage him by saying this – over the past few years he has shown a quite a lot of leadership and courage as a leader.

“The problem for the Lib Dems is nothing to do with Europe. The problem they have is very simple: they fought the 2010 election on a platform quite significantly to the left of the Labour party and ended up in a Conservative government with a platform that is significantly to the right of Labour.

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Suffragio attempts to bring thoughtful analysis to the political, economic and other policy issues that are central to countries outside of the US -- to make world politics less foreign to the US audience. Suffragio focuses, in particular, on those countries and regions with upcoming or recent elections.